Race Week

ANNAPOLIS -- A steady downpour yesterday drenched sail and sailors, but the competition didn't suffer in the second day of the 26th annual Annapolis Race Week, sponsored by the Chesapeake Bay Yacht Racing Association.Yesterday's 15- to 20-knot breezes, often gusting above 25, put sodden sailors to the test as more than 200 boats raced in three separate fleets on courses stretching from Baltimore Light to Bloody Point.Each fleet sailed only a single race yesterday, although the Fleet 2 and 3 sailors had completed two races Saturday to Fleet 1's single contest.

Charlie Kimball was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2007, news that upended his personal and professional life. But the 27-year-old English-born, California-raised open-wheel racing veteran didn't just work to get his career back on track, he's worked to inspire others. For his efforts, Kimball recently earned a Jefferson Award, a national public service award co-founded in 1972 by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, U.S. Senator Robert Taft Jr. and Sam Beard. In bestowing the honor, spokespeople for the award said, "Since his diagnosis, Kimball has been a hero to the diabetes community, regularly making appearances and spreading awareness of diabetes.

The steadily shrinking horse population at Maryland thoroughbred tracks probably will mean a shortened race week for local racing fans.By mid- or late November, management at Laurel Race Course expects to cut back from a five-day to four-day race week.Track operator Joe De Francis expects only 1,500 horses to be stabled at Laurel and Bowie Training Center by late fall and winter. This meager number of horses explains why De Francis says it is not necessary for Pimlico to remain open as a training facility.

Only five weeks remain before the November general election, but Reginald G. Avery's campaign for Howard County Council is just getting started. The 56-year-old Oakland Mills resident became a Republican county council candidate Monday after an earlier candidate nominated in the primary officially withdrew. Avery admitted his chances of unseating incumbent Democrat Calvin Ball in East Columbia's District 2 election are slim at best, but he said "I believe residents should have a choice.

RACE AT A GLANCE: Field for middle jewel of racing's Triple Crown nearly complete: Olympio, Strike the Gold, Best Pal, Bashful, Dopey, Grumpy, Sneezy and Doc.TODAY'S PROFILE: Hansel. Although the favorite, Hansel finished 10th in Kentucky Derby, leading to speculation race was "fixed" in bizarre pact with blood sister Gretel, currently on lam from authorities. Incredibly slow horse is expected to finish Saturday's race sometime Sunday afternoon.HEARD AROUND THE BARNS: Jockey Chris McCarron ballooned to 117 pounds before diet of mustard greens and tap water got weight down to more manageable 115. McCarron also chided by local truant officer for "not being in school like the other seventh-graders."

This year's total of 225 boats registered made CBYRA's annual Annapolis Race Week for 1991, held over the Labor Day weekend, the biggest ever in the 25-year history of the event.The record number of competitors and the large numbers of sailors from both ends of the bay and just about everywhere in between offered a chance for exciting competition against new and old rivals and helped encourage heavy participation through the regatta.Frustratingly light and shifty winds coupled with a foul current in Saturday's first contest of the three-race series confounded many sailors in both fleets.

SOLOMONS ISLAND -- When the first starting gun goes off over the waters of the Chesapeake Bay at about 10 a.m. today, the third annual Audi-Yachting Race Week at Solomons will be off and running for five days of racing.Seventy-one yachts, ranging in size from three J/24s to North sailmaker Jim Allsopp's Holland 50, Ichiban, will be competing for daily and series class trophies as well as two coveted overall performance trophies: the Audi Quattro and Yachting Magazine Chelsea Clock awards.

The Chesapeake Bay Yacht Racing Association's 26th annual Annapolis Race Week came to a close Monday with the lightest air of the three-day regatta.More than 200 boats took part in the event, divided into three fleets racing on separate courses stretching from Baltimore Light to Bloody Point.On Saturday, the regatta opened with oscillating but very sailable 8- to 12-knot breezes.Fleet 1, with the biggest and potentially fastest boats, was set a single, 12.6-mile race by race managers from Annapolis Yacht Club.

SOLOMONS -- With Hurricane Bob safely north of the Chesapeake Bay well before the start of racing yesterday, the third annual Audi-Yachting Race Week at Solomons Island was off to a nearly perfect start, with moderate and relatively steady breezes and flat water to assist the fleet of 71 starters around the course.Although heavier air from the passing storm had been expected, winds were 17 to 18 knots out of the northwest at the 10 a.m. start, and dropped off gradually into the 8- to 10-knot range while shifting gradually to the west, persistently favoring the left side of the beats on the flat triangular course.

It will be old home week for Annapolis sailors when Audi-Yachting Race Week begins in Key West, Fla., on Jan. 13.More than a dozen locally based boats and crews have gone south for the event, and many area sailors have joined "foreign" teams. Look for the turnout on the starting line and the crowds at the parties each afternoon to have a distinctly Annapolitan flavor, despite the palm trees and balmy breezes.Old Chesapeake rivals will take this opportunity to test each other as well as new adversaries from across the country in the warm waters and big swells off southern Florida.

Ron Katz is an Annapolis sailor desperately seeking news about the Volvo Ocean Race series. "It is like being out in the desert," he said. But lately, Katz, 38, and a group of his friends have found an oasis. They've been tuning in to Maryland Public Television's Saturday night broadcasts of race highlights. The race will arrive in Annapolis and Baltimore this month. The mainstream television media in the U.S. have thus far taken a pass on covering the round-the-world ocean race, and Katz has found that MPT is the only local station where he can regularly watch footage of sailors tacking, trimming their sails and hanging on as water breaks over the hulls of the 70-foot racing boats.

The purpose of today's seventh annual BikeJam is to celebrate cycling, but those competing are looking forward to more than the festivities. Held in Patterson Park, BikeJam's Kelly Cup race acts as Stage 1 in the biggest week in U.S. Cycling. For male professional cyclists, the Jam leads into next week's Wachovia Series races in Trenton, N.J., and Lancaster, Pa., which culminate in the pinnacle of the racing season, the Wachovia USPRO Championship on June 5. Ben Brooks, an Australian who rides for Jelly Belly-PoolGel, is using the Kelly Cup as a dress rehearsal for the upcoming road races.

Dennis, the vagabond hurricane that eventually swept across Maryland as a tropical depression last weekend, apparently had no adverse impact on fishing waters across the state, although the storm's northeast winds reshaped portions of the Atlantic coastline."

The fleet in the Whitbread Round the World Race will fight its way up Chesapeake Bay today and is expected to finish at Fort McHenry in late afternoon or early evening.But which boat would finish first was still very much in doubt yesterday as the fleet of nine passed around Cape Hatteras, N.C., and left the Gulf Stream to set up their entrance to the bay.At today's second position report at 3 a.m. (GMT), BrunelSunergy of the Netherlands held a 25-mile lead over Swedish Match of Sweden. But what had been a 40-plus mile lead earlier in the 870-mile leg that started in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Sunday, was still being trimmed by the yachts in second through seventh place.

HOW IMPORTANT is the Preakness Stakes to Maryland racing? Without Saturday's hoopla and the huge throng of fans crowding into Pimlico, the state's two main thoroughbred tracks would be drowning in millions of dollars of red ink.Last year, for instance, the Preakness generated $4.2 million in net income. Minus that glorious payoff, Pimlico and Laurel would have finished 1996 about $2.5 million in debt.The Preakness is the Superbowl of Maryland racing. This is the day when the nation's thoroughbred industry focuses on Old Hilltop and the Run for the Black-Eyed Susans.

Was it just another boring week in paradise for the skippers and crews of 200-plus boats sailing in Mount Gay/Yachting Race Week at Key West, Fla., this year? No way.And for four local skippers, it was a major accomplishment, to have won one's class in this highly competitive and prestigious international event, a seven-race series over five days of windward-leeward racing last week.Conditions during the week offered a variety of wind conditions, topped off by Friday's 15- to 20-knot breezes.

It's the beginning of August, so it's time to start planning for the Chesapeake Bay Yacht Racing Association's annual Annapolis Race Week during Labor Day Weekend, Sept. 3-5.New this year, all skippers who get their regatta entries in before Aug. 24 will receive an invitation to a pre-event party sponsored by Hecht's and Nautica.Yacht clubs providing the organizational on-water management include Annapolis Yacht Club, Baltimore City Yacht Association, Eastport Yacht Club, the Gibson Island Yacht Squadron, Magothy River Sailing Association, Naval Academy Sailing Squadron, Sailing Club of the Chesapeake, Shearwater Sailing Club and West River Sailing Club.

The time is now to register for the Chesapeake Bay Yacht Racing Association's annual Performance Racing Seminar, set for Feb. 26 and 27.The event always fills up fast, and space in the Humanities Building at Anne Arundel Community College is limited, so this year, especially when guest speakers include John Kolius and Dave Flynn, reserving early can make the difference between disappointment and better race results in the spring.Kolius, one of the world's premier racers, holds titles in everything from dinghies to maxis, including a silver medal in Solings in the 1976 Olympics.